Smells like...cat pee?

Wine descriptions are often filled with good sounding, yummy words like tropical fruit, chocolate, citrus, floral. But there is another set of descriptors in the world of wine that you may not want to think exist in your glass. Words like sweat, barnyard and yes, even cat pee often make their way into wine descriptions. Do these descriptors indicate a bad wine? And do we really have to think about that putrid smell of cat pee before enjoying our glass of wine?

Wine descriptors are numerous and allow tasters to work with a common vocabulary to describe the aromas, flavors and texture of a wine. Descriptors can vary significantly from taster to taster. We will all taste a wine in a slightly different way. But the descriptors allow us to put into words what we are experiencing.

Many wine descriptors are easy to grasp and conceptualize, especially if you have spent any time in a kitchen. Words like buttery, citrus, tropical, dark berry and chocolate are pretty straightforward. It gets a little more complicated when you get to descriptors like clean, accessible, earthy and full. These words might mean something slightly different to each taster but they typically can get tasters to a common ground. But what about words like cat pee and sweat? What do they mean and can they possibly indicate anything good about a wine?

Cat pee, sweat and barnyard are words you’ll actually hear quite often if you spend a lot of time reading wine descriptions. New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs are wonderfully crisp, vibrant wines with great fruit aromas and flavors. Yet you will often hear sweat and cat pee when describing a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. They don’t indicate anything bad about the wine, just descriptions that help find a common ground for describing the taste of these distinct wines.

Wine descriptors can be a lot of fun and very useful when describing wine. Definitely use lots of ripe fruit, citrus and chocolate descriptors but don’t hesitate to throw in a cat pee now and then.